With approval from major drilling and fracking companies, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has proposed a set of regulations to reduce pollution from methane and other dangerous gases leaked by the oil and gas industry. The rules are focused on fracking wells, a mostly unregulated drilling technology that has allowed an unprecedented increase in fossil fuel extraction in Colorado and across the nation.

If there’s going to be reform to the Senate’s rules, it’s going to have to come from the Senate itself. That’s the implication of a ruling in federal court today throwing out a Constitutional challenge to the filibuster.

The one reason that a set of filibuster reforms that fall short of eliminating the 60-vote Senate may still allow for majoritarian democracy in that body is that it would set the precedent that the Senate can determine its rules with a majority vote rather than a 2/3 vote. The minority still obstructing consistently would [...]

John Boehner, who is not now nor has ever been a Senator, has nonetheless decided to insert himself into the debate over Senate rules reform. Boehner threatened to ignore all bills coming from the Senate passed with the help of a reformed filibuster, which is really all bills, since ending the filibuster on the motion to proceed would apply to all legislation.

The darkly comic part of this is that there’s probably no bigger liberal interventionist in the executive branch than Susan Rice. We may not have had a US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and by association a ruler other than Moammar Gadhafi, if it wasn’t for Susan Rice and her foreign policy perspective winning the day in 2011.

The White House, in announcing the departure of Mary Schapiro as Chairwoman of the SEC, also took the unusual step of “designating” her replacement – a way to fill the vacancy at the top of the commission without confirmation in the Senate. Elisse Walter, a current commissioner, will replace Schapiro.

With the expectation of a series of new cabinet appointments (though not Attorney General, apparently) comes the expectation of a number of bruising nomination fights on the floor of the Senate. In particular, Senate Republicans seem to want to collect a scalp if UN Ambassador Susan Rice gets nominated to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. They blame Rice for providing false information about the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

Republicans may or may not have the muscle to get this done. But they certainly would not if Democrats simply ended the undemocratic, extra-Constitutional super-majority Senate through changes to the rules process.

Sen. Jeff Merkley was pleased that the Majority Leader was coming around to his way of thinking on the filibuster. “It felt good that the Majority Leader publicly declared that there’s a problem that has to be addressed,” Merkley said. “It’s been a continuous affliction of the minority blocking debate on legislation.” But will anything be fixed?

The surface transportation bill, which passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee on a unanimous vote, has been mired on the Senate floor for close to a month. Senate Republicans have filibustered all efforts to wrap up work on the bill, mainly because they sought a series of bumper-sticker amendment votes to make vulnerable Democrats uncomfortable. They know the bill has broad support and will eventually pass, but if they can hold together on cloture votes, they can block it until they get their way on amendments. Most of them have nothing to do with transportation policy. Fully 1/12 of the Senate’s time this year, then, will be spent on a standoff over squeezing election-year message votes out of the majority.